Line #115 Headscratchers/DjangoUnchained


1	* Why did Schultz decide to [[spoiler: shoot Candie]]? They were in the clear. They had more or less won. He could have avoided the ordeal easily enough simply by shaking his hand and completing the deal, ensuring that Brunhilda and Django walked out of the house as free people. His actions ended up putting them in grave danger.
2	** In his own words: "I couldn't resist."
3	*** This. Everyone has moments where their emotions overrule logic.
4	*** I also suspect, as did some others in the theater that Calvin was just using that as a ruse to get him close enough to possibly kill him as well as Django, then keep Broomhilda and the money.
5	*** This makes sense, since Candie's claim that the bill of sale wasn't legally binding unless there was a handshake is patently ridiculous. You could argue as much as you wanted in a court of law, but if the contract's properly signed and notarized(which it was), there's no way it's not legally binding unless one of the conditions of the contract was broken. Candie was also probably trying to take advantage of Schultz being a foreigner, counting on him not knowing the laws of the land. But since Schultz, as a bounty hunter, was an agent of the law, he would obviously be familiar with how contracts work under the United States system of law, so he obviously knew Candie was full of shit.
6	*** Considering that there were armed men waiting at the entrance hall and right outside the front door, it's obvious Candie arranged for them to kill those interlopers and Brunhilda the second they appeared where they wouldn't make a mess.
7	*** This isn't obvious. This scene is no different from any other scene where Candie's armed guards are present. He's one of the largest plantation owners in the state. He'd have to have armed guards around regardless of whether he was in the presence of someone he knew tried to rip him off. Candie, if nothing else, is a petty man. Embarrassing Schultz and Django (and taking all their money) was enough satisfaction for him.
8	** WordOfGod says that Schultz's tendency to play too many gambits instead of going for a straightforward plan doomed them from the start. Schultz is a control freak who has to be in the driver's seat. Candie actually cared little about Broomhilda enough that he would have been willing to sell her both before and after the ruse was discovered- he wasn't planning on killing them after the $12,000 sale, he was happy with the money and with humiliating the bounty hunters. Schultz, however, could not bring himself to be subservient to Candie by shaking his hand- his fatal character flaw. [[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/20/quentin-tarantino-django-unchained_n_2340987.html See this interview for the full details.]]
9	*** Personally, while I dig Tarantino's explanation and it does make things more interesting (the ever-so cool Schultz was done in by his own hubris and by being a sore loser, Candie for all his evil was honorable enough- or at least apathetic enough- to be willing to make good on his business deal), my interpretation was that Schultz was a bit unhinged after the corruption and evil he witnessed at Candyland. Hence, the flashbacks he had of the slave being ripped apart by dogs. The revulsion at that atrocity and his own complicitness in it (interestingly, Django seems to have no guilt from it at all, so focused he was on saving his wife) caused Schultz to want to kill Candie regardless of the cost. Even when it would lead to the situation becoming even worse. It's Tarantino, after all- you can't have a happy ending without bloodstained pathos.
10	** Better question: why didn't Schultz shoot [[spoiler:TheDragon? We know from the scene with the sheriff that his deringer has two shots, and he had a window to shoot Candie's bodyguard.]]
11	*** If he believed Candie was about to kill them, then why not wait until they're outside so they can at least shoot their way out and escape as opposed to essentially giving Django and Brunhilda a death sentence? Personally, I didn't get the impression Candie was going to kill them but even then, there were smarter ways to go about doing things.
12	*** You don't think Candie was going to kill them, then what were the armed men doing on the second floor of the entrance hall and right outside the front door?
13	*** Candie always had armed men around him. That scene was no different from all the others.
14	*** Considering that they were standing guard over two ''very'' dangerous bounty hunters, it might have been pragmatism on Candie's part. That said, Schultz really should have put that second barrel to use. If he and Django were fighting their way out, they might've been able to win together.
15	*** Schultz probably wasn't expecting to get out of this alive, since he knows once he killed Candie he'd have to face all of his guards. One more shot wouldn't have made a difference.
16	*** He could have taken out Candie's Brute while Django went for his gun. If it was Schultz and Django, two proven badasses, fighting their way out, they probably would have won together.
17	** If Candie and his men were planning on killing them, it would at least be smarter on Schultz's part to begin to gunfight outside where they can run off into the woods under the cover of night as opposed to shooting Candie in the middle of a well-lit house while surrounded by his mooks. As someone else pointed out, killing the unarmed Candie first instead of the Dragon was pretty dumb and it gets even worse when Schultz puts the gun away, turns, shurgs, and says "Sorry. Couldn't resist." to Django (the sort of thing people say when they know they've done something pointless but acted out of pure emotion). He could've, y'know, kept fighting. He probably would've lived longer.
18	*** It was clear at that point that emotion had purely overruled logic. You could see he was pissed that he'd just lost 12,000 bucks (she was worth 300, and if their diversion plan had worked then that's all Schultz would have paid). He snaps at the harpist for playing the music, and his mind keeps flashing back to the dogs ripping D'Artagnan apart. He was already in a sorry state when Candie forced him to shake hands. At that point he just snapped. It was a "hot-blooded" murder, and he was willing to trade his life for it, so that's why he didn't bother fighting back.
19	*** When he shot the sheriff, he then palmed another bullet into the gun. It's a single-bullet pistol. The spontaneity with which he shot Calvin was probably what caused him not to have a back-up bullet. That, or he wanted to be killed, as previously mentioned.
20	*** It's definitely an over-under, with two barrels. You can see it clearly (but just for a moment) when he shoots the sheriff. The Internet Movie Firearms Database say it (or they) are anachronistic Cobra "Big Bore" Derringer(s), which weren't produced until the 1860s.
21	*** Consider this too: Schultz had just paid $12,000 dollars for a single slave, while D'Artagnan could have been saved from a gruesome death with a pitiful $300. And this enormous amount sum of money had been made working as a lawman of sorts was going to likely going to be used to fund legal fights to the death between human beings. With the extended bill of sale scene followed spliced in with bits of Schultz's thoughts of D'Artagnan, got the feeling that Schultz realized that no matter what attempts he made to be a moral sort of killer, even as a bounty hunter working within the law, he'd always have blood on his hands because the laws themselves were rather senseless. Schultz had killed horse thieves and cattle rustlers without batting an eye, and yet here Candie was allowed to run a business dedicated entirely to selling human death as entertainment and there was nothing he could do about it.
22	** In addition to what's already been mentioned, I think it's important not to overlook the symbolism inherent to the gesture. There's a reason the act of turning a blind eye to someone else's wrongdoing for your own benefit is considered "shaking hands with the devil". Schultz wouldn't just be making himself subservient to Candie by shaking his hand; he would be ''condoning'' his atrocities and becoming even more complicit in them than he was already. It's implied that Schultz thought he would be crossing a kind of MoralEventHorizon in sealing the deal, especially in light of some of his more questionable actions, such as killing a man in front of his son. Schultz shooting Candie may have been less HonorBeforeReason and more an attempt on his part to invoke RedemptionEqualsDeath.
23	* When Lara gets killed, why did she suddenly get blown across the room at a right angle to where she was shot?
24	** RuleOfFunny.
25	** It's a reference to women's deaths in old Westerns, who tended to be less gruesome than those of men or shown in less detail.
26	* Did anyone maybe get the feeling of a bit of racism in some of Django's actions? I mean, he kills Lara, who had basically done NOTHING to him, and oftentimes gunned down helpless opponents who were no threat to him(namely "Moonlight", one of Candie's thugs). Was that just a thing with the Spaghetti Westerns that this movie pays homage to or is it me?
27	** Absolutely. Django is a former slave. The only white people he probably came into contact with before the film were overseers and slavers. Schultz is almost definitely the first white guy that has ever treated him like a human being rather than a chattel. I'd be pretty fucking prejudiced if that was the case.
28	** Lara ordered him to be castrated. The only reason she changes her mind is because Stephen influences her to send Django to the mines, for the sole reason that it would be a fate worse than death.
29	** Lara suggested that Django be sent to the mining company as opposed to killed in various gruesome fashions. Not only that but she is part of the slavery system and indirectly benefits from the suffering of the slaves. Don't forget she's the one who brought Brunhilda to Schultz under the guise that he wanted to have sex with her. It's highly likely that she brought the "entertainment" for Candie's other guests in the past as well.
30	*** Yeah, Lara's clearly meant to be a subversion of the "poor innocent white woman taken down by the ScaryBlackMan" trope. She may seem like an innocent SouthernBelle at first glance, but she's as bigoted and cruel as the rest of them are, just more limited in her powers because this was a heavily patriarchal society.
31	** Moonlight or Billy Crash wanted to ''castrate'' Django.
32	*** In regards to Django being sent to the slave mines, the movie implies that it was Stephen who made that call not Lara. As for Moonlight, yeah the dude was a scumbag who deserved what he got. But Django STILL executed the guy in cold blood even though the dude was absolutely no threat to him. And Lara's StepfordSmiler mannerisms in addition to her outburst at Candie during dinner suggested that she definitely wasn't the type to be as cruel or merciless as her brother was.
33	*** She was going to castrate him or send him to the mines. She's just as cruel or merciless as her brother wrapped in a different box.
34	*** Whether Moonlight was a threat or not is completely irrelevant. The entire movie is a revenge fantasy -- it's practically Literature/TheCountOfMonteCristo with the first act relegated to a few flashbacks and the SerialNumbersFiledOff, an impression that's only further encouraged by the explicit references to Creator/AlexandreDumas -- and Moonlight had it comin' because of his earlier actions.
35	*** No, she didn't want to see her back because it was ''dinnertime'' and they were ''trying to eat''. Finding something to be gross is different from finding it to be morally abhorrent. When Candie suggested that they look at her back instead after dinner, Lara had no problem with that.
36	*** When did Candie suggest looking at her back after dinner? From the way Candie interacted with her(including shooing her out of the room when he was about to spring his trap on Django and Schultz), it seemed like she was, more or less, kept out of the business by her brother.
37	*** You're forgetting how the movie began if you think they are no threat to him. Django was bought by Schultz because he could identify his bounties. Regardless of whether or not he had personal grudges against these people, he had to eliminate them lest they come after him later. He only didn't have to shoot the slaves other than [[HappinessInSlavery Stephen]] because he knew they wouldn't come after him for the deaths as they were more likely to focus on avoiding recapture and probably didn't care all that much that slavers were dead.
38	*** Django '''needs''' to kill Lara. He’s murdered a lot of white people and is planning to destroy Candieland. If he leaves her alive, she’s guaranteed to tell the authorities and if that happened Django and Broomhilda would never get out of Mississippi alive. Killing Lara was an absolute necessity.
39	** Django IS racist - it's a credit to Tarantino that he can still make the guy sympathetic. Not going the PC route, since a lot of his racism is justified by his "us vs. them" slave/master outlook on race relations, but the fact that the guy says "Killing white folks and getting paid for it? Sounds good to me." Shows he has a certain disdain for most Caucasians. The movie itself reinforces this, somewhat, by portraying all Whites non-essential to the plot as extreme rednecks.
40	*** How on earth is Django racist? He was a ''slave'', and all his violence is directed either towards people with legitimate, legal bounties on them, or white slave-owners and their enforcers. [[MortonsFork More than that, he's also forced to repeatedly feign disinterest while pretending to be a slaver.]] Racism would mean an ''irrational'' hatred of ''all'' white people, when fact, the only two friends he has in the movie, King and Sheriff Gus, are white.
41	** ''Almost'' all: the sheriff in the bounty-hunting montage knows Django well enough to invite him into his house for cake. Schultz by himself is already a huge statistical outlier for the pre-war American South, so the fact that Django keeps running into racist rednecks isn't the film color-coding its villains; it's TruthInTelevision.
42	** Lara was essentially complicit in Candie's schemes. Notice how at least several days have passed since the first shootout, and it's still business as usual in Candy Land when Django returns. In Django's eyes, she's no better than any other Southern slaveholder.
43	** I'm having a hard time understanding why it would racist to kill the people who run the plantation responsible for brutalizing your wife. His motivation is personal revenge; he's not leading a Nat Turner-style slave revolt.
44	*** If that's the case, why didn't Django plug the Kitchen Slave lady (the one who was shown to be second to Stephen as far as house slaves went) and Candie's fuck-toy slave as well? As I pointed out before, Lara came off as rather detached from the overall brutality that her brother and Stephen were doing, and thus it just felt rather cruel that Django went and gunned her down for no real reason other than "she's the sister of Calvin."
45	*** She's a slave owner. Stop trying to find humanity in someone not reciprocating the same notion.
46	*** Can it be cruel and yet not racist?
47	*** Plus the Kitchen Lady wasn't complicit. Django didn't kill Stephen because of his position in the house; he killed him because he was a scheming villain who nearly put him back into slavery again.
48	** Lara was completely passive. While she was never shown to be particularly cruel (at least, not until Calvin's death) she didn't object to the racism either. She is the apathetic white who, while not cruel sadists like Calvin, wasn't an abolitionist like Schultz and didn't do anything to prevent the cruelty at Candieland. She symbolizes the apathy that allows tyranny to exists, so Django blew her across the room.
49	*** She's fully active in the system. There's no passivity there.
50	*** While the offing of Lara was never as big of a problem in my book, there's something profoundly wrong with that line of argumentation. I don't know about you, but killing every single passive German whose acquiescence to the horror of Nazism or American Southerner whose acquiescence to the Antebellum/Confederate agenda helped ensure those things were perpetuated would be MONSTROUS. I'm not saying these people should be given candy canes and a pat on the back for it, but at some point moral agency has to step in and dictate the putting of a can on vengeance. Patton didn't execute German civilians, he forced them to parade through a death camp; the Red Army (largely) shot them out of hand, and looking at the formation of East Germany and the resurgence of Neo-Nazism in the ex-GDR probably give some idea about what gets people and society to learn better. The only reasons this didn't bother me in the movie was because A: frankly, Lara was never entirely passive (see the "tortured to death" bit below) and B: Even if she was, it would be more or less very much in Django's character to at least consider doing so (not unlike the horrible bastardization that was- well- Inglorious Bastards and how Hans Landa is almost if not as sympathetic as the Bastards themselves...Just No.).
51	*** The argument might have been aimed more towards the purposes of Lara's symbolic position then an actual point-blank statement that all passive participants to an evil act should be shot so hard they leave the room.
52	*** It could be argued that Laura was, at least partly, responsible for Django and Shultz's plan falling apart. She commented on Hildy's attraction to Django ("Hildy seems to have big eyes for Django.") which drew Stephen's attention and led to Shultz getting killed. If Laura hadn’t have made that comment, it is entirely possible, maybe even likely, that Shultz, Django and Hildy could have ridden off without hassle or bloodshed.
53	*** Killing Laura was at least partly pragmatic. With her, Calvin, Stephen, Moguy, Butch and Billy Crash all dead Candie Land is now without leadership so the remaining hands and over-seers can't mobilize to hunt for Django and Hildy and there's no one left to inform the authorities of exactly what went down.
54	** Are we ''really'' questioning why the ex-slave who has met a grand total of two white people who have treated him with basic humanity while all the others have variously enslaved, degraded, abused, humiliated, neglected and / or attempted to castrate and/or kill him and his loved ones might have a generally low opinion of white people? And why he might subsequently have few moral qualms with shooting the white people who have, in the events we see depicted, been largely responsible for (or at least passively complicit in) aforementioned enslavement, degradation, abuse, humiliation, neglect and / or attempts at castration or murder?
55	*** You, fellow troper, underestimate the amount of dissociation of those who wish to distance themselves from racism without truly rebuking and disavowing its evils or their part in them via complacency with the system as it stands.
56	* Why did Billy Crash yell out "D-jango"? The only way he could have known there was a silent D to mispronounce in the first place was if he had somehow read his name somewhere.
57	** [[RuleOfFunny Because it was funny]].
58	** Remember when Django was caught and hanging? Billy Crash walked in and said "Found your saddlebags and books of figures." He would have read Django's name in that information.
59	* Candie just keeps intact skulls around in case he needs to give a phrenology lesson?
60	** In another scene he talks about "his colleagues in the field of phrenology" which tells me he's a bit of an amateur scientist, and phrenologists in real life collected interesting skulls.
61	** He really likes the [[Theatre/{{Hamlet}} "Alas poor Yorick"]] scene and finally had another use for that skull.
62	* The scenes with the Klan confused me. Did they first circle the wagon, then talk about the hoods, then circle the wagon again?
63	** It was a flashback, they talked about the hoods before circling the wagon we where just shown the charge first.
64	** Another interpretation could be this shot is intended to show the raid [[ImagineSpot fantasized as going ideally]] before cutting to the rather laughable reality that the masks are not even properly prepared.
65	** If we, the viewers, had been treated to a scene where the problem with the masks was explained, then cut to them all circling the wagon, it would have ended up with a boringly predictable scene where we all knew they were about to get blown up/ shot/ otherwise killed. There is an element of rewatch value in that you only just see the dynamite being stashed in the tooth and it'seasy to forget once the hilarity of the ensuing conversation evolves.
66	* Why do so many people hold up Lara selling Django to the mines as being so evil? It seems obvious she did it out revenge for the death of her brother. I can understand the arguments that her general complicity in slavery makes her villainous but a lot of people seem to cite her selling Django as something done ForTheEvulz rather than in rage and grief.
67	** From the subtext of the conversation, I strongly feel that Lara was only slightly involved in the decision to sell Django to the mines. The way Stephen spoke made it pretty clear that selling Django to the mines was his idea and that he'd manipulated everyone to make them think it was Lara's. She's not evil like Candie, just a symptom of the culture in which she was raised and an easy mark for a manipulative bastard like Stephen.
68	** Because its such an out there and cruel FateWorseThanDeath that even with her being grief stricken that's still fairly horrible of her to do.
69	** Well for one thing Django didn't kill Candie, that was Schultz. For another, instead of simply having him killed or arrested she decided to have him ''tortured to death''.
70	*** Django did still shoot dozens of her workers and essentially ruin her house. And given the way she seems to detach herself from the issues of slavery, I doubt she knows the extent of the cruelty workers at the mines are shown. All she seemingly has is Stephen's word that it would be a more fitting punishment than death.
71	*** What evidence do you have she detaches herself from the issues of slavery? That one line where she says she doesn't want to look at Hildy's whipped back? I'm sorry but that just tells me she's not a complete and utter sadist and is easily counteracted by the fact just scenes before hand she was gussying Hildy up to be raped by Dr. Schultz. We have no reason to believe that she isn't just as racist as everyone else who works at and runs Candieland or that she is ignorant of what Le-Quint Dickey is like.
72	*** It's possible for both views to be correct, as well as the theory that I posted above. Lara seems somewhat emotionally fragile (her reaction to seeing Brunhilde's whipped back provoked an immediate and strong response, unusually) and, yes, detached from the realities of slavery. I have a hard time believing that Candie brings her along to his Mandingo fights, for example! Someone in that kind of precarious emotional state would be easy to manipulate, and if you go along with the idea that Stephen was a ManipulativeBastard who was able to feed her the idea carefully, it's the kind of disproportionate retribution that someone like that might latch onto against the person who came along and rocked her comfy boat.
73	*** It wasn't an emotional response to the horror--she was ashamed because it was inappropriate at the dinner table. She did not personally care about Broomhilda. As pointed out, she was about to subject Django to brutal torture, which is only stopped because Stephen thinks up a better one and slyly suggests it to her. Django did not kill her brother, and if he killed anyone else, it was in reasonable self defense, as they were about to turn and kill him. She was not innocent. As someone said above, her sadism was limited by the lack of power she had in her society, not by her bleeding heart.
74	* The entire premise of the plot. Why does Schultz need Django in the first place? To spot the Brittle brothers, yes, but Schultz knows what all his ''other'' bounties look like, nothing of this sort ever happens again, and there's nothing that suggests the Brittle brothers are particularly hard to locate. Going by fake names is a complication but certainly not unheard of among bandits. I could see Schultz just randomly running across Django and realizing he knows the dudes, but deliberately seeking him out? And why Django, specifically? Surely he wasn't the only one on the plantation.
75	** With his other bounties he had a wanted poster, the exception being the sheriff. In the case of the Brittle brothers all he had was a warrant explaining who they were. He had to track them down and the way he decided to do that was to use somebody who could confirm what they looked like. Him choosing Django for that job was probably a matter of convenience, since he had just been sold (auctions have records) and was still in transit, making it easy to buy/steal him from his new owners.
76	** Not to mention that a (former) slave would be far more likely to help kill three white overseers than a pre-Civil War southern white would. Anyone else might have refused to identify the brothers or double-crossed Schultz before his job was finished.
77	** Also, Shultz has a case of ComplexityAddiction. It's a weakness of his that eventually gets him killed.
78	* A lot is made of the fact that Django has to kill a man in front of his son, but why is the killing necessary in the first place? The poster explicitly says "dead OR alive," and the outlaw isn't exactly in a position to resist a pair of armed killers. I could see Schultz being so jaded that he would rather kill the man than worry about transporting him alive, but Django never raises the point either after his initial protest.
79	** It goes back to Shultz, really. We're shown again and again that he's a killer at heart (even if he is a sympathetic one). The killing isn't, in fact, necessary, but Shultz doesn't take his prisoners alive (too much hassle, and potentially dangerous). Shultz pushes Django into that killing to bring him around to Shultz's worldview.
80	** Django also doesn't seem to be entirely against the killing of the outlaw in and of itself, just against killing him in front of his son. The option of taking the outlaw alive isn't on the table, rightly or wrongly, and Django knows that, but he still has some trouble with the specifics.
81	** What makes you think he's not in a position to resist? From that distance you couldn't tell if he was wearing a gun or not. Even if not, in that era (in movies at least) if you see two men riding into your property, the first thing you do is fetch your gun. And even if they do subdue him, can you guarantee he won't be able to escape, or turn the tables on you? Django escaped from experienced slave owners, killing them all in the process, and did so in a matter of minutes. Dead men can't kill you and can't escape from you, so given that you get the same money if they're dead as you do if they're alive, why take any risk at all?
82	* Why didn't Django allow Schultz to save D'Artagnan? To keep up the ruse to fool Candie?
83	** Basically, yes.
84	* Why were there so many {{Mooks}} in the big shootout at the end? There's no reason for Calvin to have that many white employees.
85	** Well, not necessarily, but bear in mind that the image of the planter aristocracy isn't the whole picture of slavery. There were a great deal of small and medium planters, who owned only 10 or 20 slaves. Every one would be invested in keeping the system of slavery maintained, and in preventing any black uprising. Armed blacks like Django were pure NightmareFuel for Southern planters. It could be that Candie's neighbors turned out to help him, given a threat to one was ultimately a threat to all - if Candy was overthrown, then the other slaves might get ideas. It's why Big Daddy is so keen to make a lesson out of killing Django: if he lets him whip and then execute two white men without retribution, Big Daddy's slaves might not fear white oppression quite so much...
86	*** Also, there probably is a reason for Candie to have that many white employees. We see... what? A few dozen? A good number of plantations had hundreds of slaves, and that is a Lot to keep in check. To top it off, Candie's plantation is the fourth largest in Tennessee, and is basically a self-contained economy in its' own right on top of being tapped into the wider global one. So you would need a lot of manpower to provide security alone, nevermind do things like specialized labor that wouldn't be trusted to slaves, transporting, etc. If anything, it's probably lucky Candie hired so few of them.
87	* Since it's so unheard of for blacks to ride on horses, how come Django and Broomhilda manage it perfectly the first time we see either of them getting on a horse?
88	** Maybe their runaway attempt involved stealing horses from the plantation they were at and they practiced for a while before making their escape.
89	** IRL, slaves were sometimes used to do the menial tasks of having a horse that their master couldn't be arsed to do, like feeding, cleaning, and even taking the horse out for exercise. They likely learned how to ride the horses from being assigned to take the horse on walks around the property. What was unheard of was a black person riding their own horse in the company of whites, since freedmen tended to be poor and lacking in the resources to purchase and maintain a horse.
90	* Why does no one in the film notice the IncestSubtext between Candie and his sister? He wasn't exactly subtle about it. Incest has always been taboo, so it's strange that no one even comments on it.
91	** Because no one there was in a position where they'd want to upset Candie. They all want to stay on his good side.
92	** Besides, this was the South. Stereotypes have to come from somewhere, right?
93	*** If you think that, please never, ever complain about any black stereotype or any other stereotype. Stereotypes have to come from somewhere, don't they?
94	*** But this is {{TruthinTelevision}} though... Incest used to be a major issue in the South, especially in the deeper, rural parts. Why do you think the actress who played Mayella in To Kill a Mockingbird specifically tried to incorporate this in her portrayal, as a way of calling attention to the issue?
95	* Why did Schultz think Candie wouldn't sell Broomhilda to him if he showed direct interest? The fact that both he and Broomhilda speak German is a reasonable excuse for why he'd be interested in purchasing her. Feels like the whole "feigning interest in Mandingo fights" angle is unnecessary.
96	** This was my thinking exactly. An ideal plan: Schultz goes alone to Candyland, says, "I heard you have a German-speaking slave and I want someone to speak German to, how much?" Plan over.
97	** The concept is that Schultz relentless overplans and just cannot accept the simple way out (this gets him killed).
98	*** Tarantino specifically states this in an interview when asked. Basically Schultz is such a control freak he doesn't want to provide Candie with any way to be able to say "No". Would asking Candie directly to buy Broomhilda have worked? Yes. Candie didn't care about Hildy any more than a millionaire cares about his toilet paper. But Schultz's character flaw is what led to the plan he attempted. Offering Candie an extraordinary amount of money for a third-rate Mandingo then offering to buy Hildy at market value prevents Candie from being able to say "No."
99	** That and maybe Schultz suspected that Candie would not want to part with a slave that could speak German. I mean, knowing Candie, he would probably have paraded Broomhilda around the dinner table having her speak German to entertain the guests, and he would have likely used her to show [[SarcasmMode what a good planter he is for letting his slaves read and write.]] Yeah, you'd think that would be all Schultz had to do, but Schultz, as said above, can't think things through logically, and even if he did, he would have probably concluded that there would be no way Candie would sell a German-speaking slave.
100	*** The explanation that he gives in the movie is that, if he were to go out of his way and approach Candie for such a specific request, that Candie would recognize that this slave is somehow very valuable to Schultz and charge him a fortune for her.
101	*** On the other hand, Hilda was rebellious and had already tried to run away. I'm no expert but I imagine having a slave like that was bad for the ranch and no one would want to purchase an unruly slave. Candy may have tried to hold out, but if Schultz approached without seeming desperate then Candy may have just sold her cheap and been glad to get rid of her.
102	*** In traveling with Django, Schultz may have been aware of the fact that Django and Hildy had tried to escape slavery before, but may not have considered Hildy was probably a problem to whomever her owners were. One can assume that Django was always going on about how beautiful and sweet Hildy was, and Candie would have trouble understanding that someone as important to Django could be insignificant to anyone else. The truth? As said above, Candie probably would have been glad to get rid of Hildy. Schultz could have shown up, said he saw a slave in a sales record with a German name, offered Candie $500 for her, and Candie would have sold her and thought HE had gotten over on Schultz by selling him a troublesome slave for $200 more than she was worth. They would have left Candyland with Calvin thinking to himself "She's your problem now!" Schultz's complexity addiction just destroyed any chance of this happening.
103	*** ALL of Schultz's plans are far more complex and dangerous than necessary. He's a drama queen and a control freak who loves an audience. The SMART way to kill the Sherriff would have been to wait for any number of times they would have been alone, kill him and then immediately inform the Marshal. Instead Schultz causes a ruckus and kills the Sherriff in front of almost literally the entire town, before waiting for the Marshal to show up with dozens of men pointing rifles at him to finally tell him the story. A single man with an itchy trigger finger would have ended him. Likewise with the Brittles, instead of doing any number of things Schultz openly rides onto the plantation with Django in almost literally the most public way possible. Schultz is simply incapable of taking the simple, effective method. This is hinted at when he tells Django the legend of Broomhilda, Schultz is painting himself as a hero on a heroic quest to save a fair damsel. He needs to trick the Evildoer into handing her over in an elaborate scheme like any number of heroic legends. Casually walking in, buying her for a few hundred dollars and leaving, isn't heroic OR dramatic enough for Schultz.
104	** There is also the fact that Schultz despises slavery on principles. Any plan that ended with a smiling slaver was not a plan he was going to use. Could he think of nothing else, he would have bought Broomhilda for a high price but since he had an idea which enabled him to play Candie for a fool...
105	** Schultz (in pursuit of the Brittle brothers) gains access to Spencer "Big Daddy" Bennet's Tennessee plantation on the pretext of purchasing one of Bennet's "beautiful nigger gals". But the mere fact that Schultz is accompanied by a Black man (Django) that he insists be treated with respect infuriates "Big Daddy" to the point that he initially tells Schultz to go fuck himself. It's only after Schultz starts throwing around large sums of money figures that Bennet changes his tune and starts acting cordial. Schultz might have figured (unfairly or not) that if one plantation owner in Tennessee is going to behave this way, the next one he encounters in Mississippi (arguably the most racist states of all) will act the same, if not worse.
106	* Big Daddy won't allow any black man to ride a horse on his property and is very particular about ensuring that no black man is ever treated like a full white man, yet he allows his slaves to carry guns, as seen when he arrives at the site where Django killed the Brittle brothers.
107	** Because that's an emergency situation. Of course none of those slaves would be allowed to carry guns normally. He armed them only because he had to mobilize all of the force available. It's also possible that those guns are not loaded so that his "posse" would look more threatening without risks coming from giving a weapon to a slave.
108	* Wait. How the fuck is this guy going to make it out of the South alive? Being an African-American couple on the run for the murder of a rich white man -- and dozens of others -- in the antebellum South is literally the worst situation anyone could ever be in.
109	*** By being Django motherfucking Freeman, that's how.
110	*** We have evidence that he made it all the way to [[Film/AMillionWaysToDieInTheWest Old Stump, Arizona]].
111	*** You know what they'll call him? [[FastestGunInTheWest The Fastest Gun In The South]]. He'll be just fine.
112	** If Django's plan is to sneak away to the North, keep in mind that he's not exactly inconspicuous -- the movie already established that the sight of a black man on horseback stops traffic wherever he goes. And that was when he was traveling with a white companion who could have passed as his master and before he turned up on every wanted poster in the nation as the single greatest spree killer the South had ever known.
113	** "But how will anybody know Django even did it? He left no one alive!" Not true -- he spares multiple slaves in the course of his murderous bloodsplosion party. But what does Django imagine is going to happen when, say, the two house slaves he spared get picked up by some Mississippi lawman who ties them to the massacre at Calvin Candie's famous million-dollar racist fantasy camp? One or two confessions are going to be coerced out of those gals. It isn't going to take too many red-hot bowie knives to get two women with no particular loyalty to Django to completely dime him out. They know exactly who he is (a bounty hunter formerly partnered with Schultz), so it isn't going to take a ton of legwork for law enforcement to track him down. If Django shows his face anywhere near a county he collected a bounty in, the game is over.
114	*** This is still 1850s America we're discussing here, so it might take a bit more legwork than you think. The plantation by nature is likely far removed from any nearby communities, so chances are there's probably not going to be anyone around nearby to discover what happened for a little while at least, perhaps not until morning. It's night and there's going to be few people around to see them escape, and it's not like there's CCTV footage to check for where they went. The investigating authorities probably won't have anything remotely like a CSI squad to forensically piece together exactly what happened and most of the plantation house went up in a bloody big explosion, so the exact details of what took place are not necessarily going to be clear for a while. Even if/when they do figure out what happened, it's still going to take some time for the news to spread -- it's not like local law enforcement can email a bulletin with Django's details and an near-photographic likeness to every police department in the entire country instantly. Django and Broomhilda are escaping at night, meaning there's not going to be a lot of people around to see and report on their movements for a while, and since neither of them are idiots it's likely they're going to head for somewhere far, far away from anywhere that Django might be recognised or where the news of what happened can quickly spread. So, assuming they ride fast and far, they can theoretically be far away from the immediate vicinity before anyone's started looking for them and before the trail can be picked up on. It's not necessarily going to be easy, but there's a chance. A slim chance perhaps, but a chance nonetheless.
115	** The movie makes a big deal of the fact that Django and his wife have their freedom papers, but what the hell is that going to count for once details of Django's slaughter get out? Again, this wasn't some nobody he shot down -- it was a wealthy landowner from a wealthy family with powerful friends. The killer's punishment would be swift and brutal even if he was white. But when it's that man, committing that crime, in that era? Shit, we're not even sure he'd be safe in the North. Not that he'd ever make it there.
116	*** Since this isn't exactly an age where a permanent digital record of someone's identity and movements is kept and since Django probably isn't stupid enough to travel under his real name in a place where his real name is linked to a massacre, I'm suspecting that at very least a name change or two is going to be made at some point.
117	** RefugeInAudacity perhaps? The only known survivors were the black slaves, and in 1858-1859 America, would they really believe them if they told them that a OneManArmy went and destroyed the fourth largest plantation in Mississippi? He killed all of the remaining land owners, at least one or two dozen of {{Mooks}} and then he ''blew the entire place up''.
118	** Candie land is at least half a days ride from town, is completely without leadership and probably very short on manpower when Django and Hildy leave it. I think it might take days before the authorities even know who they're looking for.
119	** Also, people... Rule Of Escapism. This isn't ''Film/TwelveYearsASlave'' we're dealing with here, this is a wish-fulfilment fantasy operating on RuleOfCool. You're not supposed to be asking hard-hitting questions about the gritty realities of the difficulties of escaping white supremacist law-enforcement in the antebellum South, you're meant to cheer as an ex-slave literally blows up a slave plantation after killing all the bad guys in it, and if you do then frankly, in as much as you can watch a movie wrong you're watching this movie wrong. You might as well ask piercing questions about the geopolitical implications of Arnold Schwartenegger's rampage in ''Film/{{Commando}}''; fair enough if you want to, but you're missing the whole point if you do.
120
121	* Was Broomhilda forced into prostitution? There some implications that she might have been prostituted, and possibly raped during her time on Candie's land and before.
122	** Candie all but declares that he ordered her to be a SexSlave to his fighters.
123	* When Schultz buys Broomhilda, Candie gives him the bill, as well as the paper needed to free her. Then Schultz fills out the paper and gives it to Candie to sign. If he has already bought her, why does he need Candie's signature to free her?
124	* How historically accurate are bounty hunting and warrant papers in this movie? Schultz handed the marshal and Big Daddy warrant papers after killing the brittle brothers and sheriff. I'm surprised they believed him. Does that mean a person can create fake warrants and kill people he hate without being punished or killed?
125	** Remember, Schultz encouraged the Marshall to wire (i.e. send a telegraph to) the judge who signed the warrant for confirmation, which the Marshall would probably do before handing over $200. As for Big Daddy, he just seemed to not care, and just wanted them off his property. More importantly, to forge such a document, you would need access to both a printing press and be an expert in forging signatures and know the signature of an actual judge. You couldn't forge a warrant back then any more than you could forge one today.
126	** This is full-on HollywoodLaw. Bounty hunters came in several flavors (and sworn lawmen could and would collect any outstanding bounty on a fugitive they apprehended), but Schultz is evidently supposed to be a Sworn Warrant Officer. Such men would be legally sworn officers of the court assigned to track down specific offenders for specific warrants, though they did not have regular law enforcement authority like a county sheriff or federal marshal. They had to be specifically licensed for each state/territory in which they would operate. They also could not simply murder their mark out of hand, and would have to prove justification for any killing to the judge, i.e. killing a man who violently resisted arrest or ambushing an armed fugitive wanted for multiple murders, and he would need solid proof that the man he killed was the man he was after. Even if Schultz works for a corrupt judge, he would’ve been in prison (or hanged) for murder long before the movie starts, as he would have to deal with plenty of lawmen who wouldn't look the other way.
127	* As glad as I am Django wasn't castrated, was there any reason besides, 'Minimal time and effort will be spared to get this character out of this situation,' that he wasn't? He could have been castrated, and then, sent to the mines or had whatever other punishments Lara/Stephen wanted inflicted. Unless there's some implication the mine owner(s)/overseer(s) wanted a male slave for sexual purposes in addition to hard labor, I doubt they're going to turn down a slave just because he's a eunuch. Maybe they'd pay less than normal for a slave that might not physically be able to do as much as a fully healthy, non-disabled one, but this wasn't about money for Lara or Stephen. They both wanted him severely punished and/or killed. I can understand why both their characters might have decided not to kill him right away, but I can't see what either character got from nixing the castration idea.
128	** It's part of Stephen's monologue: nobody on their farm is really smart enough to castrate a man without letting him die in the process. In Stephen's words, "most of them" bleed out within about seven minutes, then he chuckles and corrects himself to say "more than most." Then consider that it was certified-dumb-as-a-box-of-hammers Billy Crash most likely to be performing the castration.
129	* How does Schultz know the sheriff is still crooked? People can feel guilty about their crimes and give up their evil ways. Why not take him in alive instead of gunning him down?
130	** The bounty said "dead or alive." Schultz doesn't care whether he felt guilty or not -- he's a bounty hunter, and there was a bounty on him.
131	** 'Still crooked' is irrelevant. Schultz isn't on a morality crusade to bring evildoers to justice, he's hunting wanted criminals for money. Schultz knows the sheriff is a wanted man because a judge issued a bounty that said he was wanted. And while a bit of HollywoodLaw is involved, in those days any criminal that had a 'Wanted Dead or Alive' bounty on their heads had generally committed capital crimes, their guilt was beyond doubt, and they were almost certainly going to be hung if they happened to be brought in alive. The government didn't put a bounty on everybody that committed a crime, they were generally reserved for repeat and violent criminals that the normal Sheriff/Marshal simply couldn't deal with effectively. If the bounty was still valid (and it was), then the statute of limitations hadn't run out, and the crooked sheriff was going to hang if Schultz brought him back.
132	** Remember also that we join Schultz ''in media res'' with regards to his bounty hunting -- we have no knowledge of what, if any, knowledge Schultz himself has of the sheriff's current activities. He had to have found the man's trail somehow; it's just as plausible as anything else that it was thanks to any illegal activities he might have been involved in.

Context Headscratchers / DjangoUnchained